Just a Dream
by JoeMerl
Summary: It can't hurt you. After all, it's not real, right? One-shot, Ezekiel-centric, AU...but not entirely.


_Ezekiel's footsteps echoed in the dark chamber as he turned his head in every direction, trying to see in the dim light._

_This part of the plane was filled with boxes. It was the cargo hold...at least, he thought it was. It seemed so familiar, but he couldn't actually remember having ever been down there before. (Neither did he know why he was down there now, though somehow his mind didn't bother to question it.)  
_

_Suddenly there was a noise, a scraping quite different than the sound of Ezekiel's sneakers on the dusty floor. He froze, breath caught in his throat. His ears strained against the low, trembling hum of the plane's engines, trying to make out any other noise in the darkness. It was so quiet his own heartbeat was like a drumbeat in his ears.  
_

_"H_—_Helloo? Is anyone there?"_

_There was another dull _SCRRRAAAPE,_ the sound of a heavy crate moving as someone or some_thing_ bumped against it. At the same moment Ezekiel could have sworn he felt a movement behind him, and he spun around on his heels; was that a real blur in the blackness, or was his mind just playing tricks on him, eh?_

_"I—Is anyone here? !" he called, voice trembling. He took a step backwards on shaky legs, struggling to keep his knees from knocking together. "Who is it? !"_

_He heard another sound, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was...a voice? A voice or something like it, making sounds that could have been words if they weren't really animalistic growls. Ezekiel's body only shook harder; he took another step back, nearly tripping against the corner of a crate._

_"I—I'm not a-afraid of you!" he lied, holding up his fists halfheartedly. It was the kind of thing his dad would have told him to do in this situation, provided one didn't have a shotgun handy. "Sh—show yoorself!"_

_There was another round of quiet growls, and another swift blur to make Ezekiel jump._

_Then for a moment everything was quiet, and Ezekiel slowly lowered his arms a bit. He started to think that maybe he had just let his imagination walk away from him, or however that expression went._

_Then, quite suddenly, the monster attacked._

_"_RAAAWWWL!_"_

_"_AGH!_"_

_Ezekiel was thrown __onto his back, his spine and skull banging painfully against the floor__—for a moment his head was swimming, but he could feel the creature perched over his stomach, hear its screaming growls just above him, smell its fetid odor of sweat and blood and rotten meat. __Ezekiel let out something like a moan or a scream as his vision cleared__ enough for him to see it in the dim light__—it was like some sort of half-human _thing, _its skin sallow and greenish, its hair long and scraggly, bent over him like an animal, its hot, stinking breath right on his face__—_

_"_AAAGGGHHH! Get away from me!_" Ezekiel screamed, his voice hysterical and strange for his own ears to hear. The monster gave no notice, it bent down and _**roared **_at him, and then raised one hand__—no, one _talon,_ with fingernails so long and sharp that they could sever Ezekiel's jugular with little or no trouble. They came down in a sudden swipe, so fast his whole claw was just a blur in the blackness__—Ezekiel closed his eyes tightly and screamed__—_

"_GYAH!_"

"_GAH!_"

Ezekiel jerked awake with a cry, accidentally kicking his blanket off as he thrashed wildly and looked around at his sudden new surroundings. His yell startled Cody, sleeping in the seat across from him, who jumped and dropped the basket of sweets that had been left on the armrest beside him.

"Wha' happened? ! Where's Sierra? !" he said, looking around in terror.

Ezekiel gasped, taking in the first-class compartment around them. "She's...not here, eh," he panted, sliding down in his seat and clutching his chest with one hand. "It was just...bad dream..."

"Huh? Oh..." Cody looked around too, looking sheepish as he realized he and Ezekiel were still alone. "Good...what time is it?" He looked at his watch. "Still the middle of the night...or at least, Toronto-middle-of-the-night," he murmured (it was actually dawn outside, thanks to the plane and its rapid change of time zones). "So..."

He looked over at Ezekiel, who had pulled his legs up to his chest on the opposite seat, still clutching his jacket and breathing a bit deeper than was normal. Cody frowned.

"You okay, Zeke?"

"Wha? ! Oh...yeah, fine," he muttered, slowly putting his feet back down and pulling his blanket up over his chest again. "Just a...little nightmare, that's all. Sorry if I woke you..."

Cody chuckled. "Don't worry—still the best sleep I've had all season! Thanks again for inviting me up here." He paused, his smile drooping once again into a slight, concerned frown. "Are you sure you're okay, though? That, uh...wasn't the first time I've seen you jerk awake like that..."

Ezekiel's face felt a bit warm at that remark. "Yeah-yeah, I'm sure," he said quickly, turning over and closing his eyes again. "Let's just, uh, try to get some sleep befur Chris gets us up fur another challenge, eh?"

Cody forced a chuckle. "Yeah. Those are the _real_ nightmares," he joked, closing his eyes.

After a few moments Cody's breath slowed to a calm, sleepy rhythm, but his companion opened his eyes again, staring off at the opposite wall. He doubted he would get more than a bit more sleep tonight, if at all...it was only now that his heart rate had finally slipped back down to normal.

These nightmares were getting more intense than ever, he thought—they seemed so _real,_ and they were getting scarier, from just a little eerie at first to downright violent and horrifying...he had been having these sorts of dreams for most of the season, but he just couldn't understand why. After all, other than the nightmares, everything was going great this season, wasn't it? He was doing really well, eh! And even more impressively, he had done this well _all on his own—_from DJ's vote-off in Jamaica until the teams merged in Niagra Falls he had been the only member of Team Victory left, yet he had somehow managed to always get at least second and thus avoid instant elimination. He had even gotten first place in two challenges, all by himself—first in London by catching the intern pretending to be Jack the Ripper, and then in the last challenge, hunting Sasquatchanakwa through the Tanzanian wilderness. Heck, he could even win this whole game—he had had his doubts when all his other teammates had been eliminated, but he was in the final five now, so who knew, eh?

_But why the bad dreams, then? _Was he homesick? Nervous about the competition? Scared of the challenges, which really did seem like they could have killed him sometimes? Those were all the sort of things that could cause nightmares, he thought, but they didn't explain all the darkness, the growls, the terrifying monster that looked almost human but acted like some sort of rabid, demonic _beast _ready to rip him limb from limb...

...Nor did they explain that weird feeling Ezekiel got every time he pictured the monster, an anomalous sensation that always mixed with fear down in the pit of his stomach. It was like...sadness? Pity? In his dreams he wanted so badly to run away from that thing and never look back, but always there was also this sense of depression, this weird sort of, like, regret...

There was just something about that face...it almost seemed...familiar, somehow?

Ezekiel shook his head and closed his eyes again, trying to push the wicked, miserable visage out of his mind. Instead he tried to think of home, like the nice, warm bed where he usually slept, and his parents, whom he really _did_ miss when he let himself think about them...his mind drifted to how his mom would have sat next to him when he had a nightmare as a little kid, stroking his hair, and he tried to remember some of the things she had always told him when he was scared.

_Doon't worry, honey...it's just a nightmare...it can't hurt you, it's not real, eh..._

"It's not...real..." Ezekiel murmured, closing his eyes again. "Not...real..."

Slowly his body relaxed, and his mind drifted back into a calm and blessedly dreamless sleep.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I've been toying with an idea like this for a while, and yesterday I just sort of randomly came up with a way it could actually work. I wrote and edited this all in one afternoon, so I hope it came out alright.

This can be interpreted however you want. My top ideas are the psychological "it's his 'monster' attributes trying to get out for some reason' or the supernatural "he's somehow seeing into the canon universe." I'd love to hear other weird ideas.

This would have been so much better than both the "everyone on Team Victory gets kicked off" storyline _and_ the whole "Zombie Zeke" idiocy. _Gah..._

Please review!


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